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Public Choice: Decisions, Incentives & Institutions

Reading list

Every reading this course assigns, module by module, with the best free copy we could find.

70 readings19 free to read18 on request33 books

A free copy is the published text, or the author's own manuscript held by a university repository, which has the same content without the journal's layout. A subscription reading opens at the publisher, where your library may give you access. If it does not, request a copy and we will reply by email. Books link to their publisher.

Module 1. Module 1: The Public Choice Lens

  1. Buchanan, J. M. and Tullock, G. (1962). The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. University of Michigan Press.Publisher pageBook
  2. Mueller, D. C. (2003). Public Choice III. Cambridge University Press.Publisher pageBook
  3. Bardhan, P. (2005). Scarcity, Conflicts, and Cooperation: Essays in the Political and Institutional Economics of Development. MIT Press.Publisher pageBook

Module 2. Module 2: Voting Rules and Their Consequences

  1. Buchanan, J. M. and Tullock, G. (1962). The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. University of Michigan Press.Publisher pageBook
  2. Arrow, K. J. (1963). Social Choice and Individual Values, 2nd edition. Cowles Foundation Monograph 12. Yale University Press. (First edition 1951, John Wiley and Sons.)Read it free
  3. Riker, W. H. (1982). Liberalism Against Populism: A Confrontation between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice. W. H. Freeman (reissued by Waveland Press).Publisher pageBook
  4. Sen, A. (1970). Collective Choice and Social Welfare. Holden-Day. Expanded edition 2017, Harvard University Press.Publisher pageBook

Module 3. Module 3: The Logic of Collective Action

  1. Ostrom, E. (2000). Collective Action and the Evolution of Social Norms. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14(3), 137-158.Read it free
  2. Olson, M. (1965). The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Harvard University Press.Publisher pageBook
  3. Olson, M. (1982). The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. Yale University Press.Publisher pageBook
  4. Hardin, R. (1982). Collective Action. Johns Hopkins University Press for Resources for the Future.Publisher pageBook

Module 4. Module 4: Rent-Seeking and Regulatory Capture

  1. Tullock, G. (1967). The Welfare Costs of Tariffs, Monopolies, and Theft. Western Economic Journal, 5(3), 224-232.Publisher pageSubscription
  2. Krueger, A. O. (1974). The Political Economy of the Rent-Seeking Society. American Economic Review, 64(3), 291-303.Publisher pageSubscription
  3. Stigler, G. J. (1971). The Theory of Economic Regulation. Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science, 2(1), 3-21.Publisher pageSubscription
  4. Laffont, J.-J. and Tirole, J. (1991). The Politics of Government Decision-Making: A Theory of Regulatory Capture. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 106(4), 1089-1127.Free copy, a working-paper versionPublisher page
  5. Kapur, D. and Vaishnav, M. (eds.) (2018). Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India. Oxford University Press.Publisher pageBook

Module 5. Module 5: Bureaucracy and the Principal-Agent Problem

  1. World Bank (2004). World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People. Overview. World Bank.Read it free
  2. Niskanen, W. A. (1971). Bureaucracy and Representative Government. Aldine-Atherton (reissued by Routledge).Publisher pageBook
  3. Lipsky, M. (2010). Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services, 30th anniversary expanded edition. Russell Sage Foundation. (First edition 1980.)Publisher pageBook
  4. Wilson, J. Q. (1989). Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It. Basic Books.Publisher pageBook
  5. Gupta, A. (2012). Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India. Duke University Press.Publisher pageBook
  6. Pritchett, L. (2009). Is India a Flailing State? Detours on the Four Lane Highway to Modernization. HKS Faculty Research Working Paper RWP09-013. Harvard Kennedy School.Read it free
  7. Bose, I., Arts, B. and van Dijk, H. (2012). 'Forest governmentality': A genealogy of subject-making of forest-dependent 'scheduled tribes' in India. Land Use Policy, 29(3), 664-673.Free copy, the author's accepted manuscriptPublisher page

Module 6. Module 6: Distributive Politics and Pork-Barrel Spending

  1. Buchanan, J. M. and Tullock, G. (1962). The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. University of Michigan Press.Publisher pageBook
  2. Dixit, A. and Londregan, J. (1996). The Determinants of Success of Special Interests in Redistributive Politics. Journal of Politics, 58(4), 1132-1155.Publisher pageSubscription
  3. Stokes, S. C., Dunning, T., Nazareno, M. and Brusco, V. (2013). Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism: The Puzzle of Distributive Politics. Cambridge University Press.Publisher pageBook
  4. Cox, G. W. and McCubbins, M. D. (1986). Electoral Politics as a Redistributive Game. Journal of Politics, 48(2), 370-389.Publisher pageSubscription
  5. Wilkinson, S. I. (2007). Explaining changing patterns of party-voter linkages in India. In Kitschelt, H. and Wilkinson, S. I. (eds.), Patrons, Clients, and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition. Cambridge University Press, 110-140.Publisher pageSubscription
  6. Vaishnav, M. (2017). When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics. Yale University Press.Publisher pageBook
  7. Drèze, J. and Sen, A. (2013). An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions. Princeton University Press.Publisher pageBook

Module 7. Module 7: Commons and the Ostrom Programme

  1. Ostrom, E. (2000). Collective Action and the Evolution of Social Norms. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 14(3), 137-158.Read it free
  2. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge University Press.Publisher pageBook
  3. Ostrom, E. (2009). Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems. Nobel Prize Lecture, 8 December 2009. Nobel Foundation. (Published in American Economic Review, 100(3), 641-672, 2010.)Read it free
  4. Hardin, G. (1968). The Tragedy of the Commons. Science, 162(3859), 1243-1248.Publisher pageSubscription
  5. Agarwal, B. (2010). Gender and Green Governance: The Political Economy of Women's Presence Within and Beyond Community Forestry. Oxford University Press.Publisher pageBook

Module 8. Module 8: The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework

  1. Ostrom, E. (2007). A diagnostic approach for going beyond panaceas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(39), 15181-15187.Read it free
  2. Ostrom, E. (2005). Understanding Institutional Diversity. Princeton University Press.Publisher pageBook
  3. Ostrom, E., Gardner, R. and Walker, J. (1994). Rules, Games, and Common-Pool Resources. University of Michigan Press.Publisher pageBook
  4. McGinnis, M. D. (2011). An Introduction to IAD and the Language of the Ostrom Workshop: A Simple Guide to a Complex Framework. Policy Studies Journal, 39(1), 169-183.Publisher pageSubscription
  5. Bhatt, E. R. (2006). We Are Poor But So Many: The Story of Self-Employed Women in India. Oxford University Press.Publisher pageBook
  6. Andersson, K. P. and Ostrom, E. (2008). Analyzing decentralized resource regimes from a polycentric perspective. Policy Sciences, 41(1), 71-93.Publisher pageSubscription

Module 9. Module 9: Constitutional Political Economy

  1. Buchanan, J. M. and Tullock, G. (1962). The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. University of Michigan Press.Publisher pageBook
  2. Buchanan, J. M. (1975). The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan. University of Chicago Press.Publisher pageBook
  3. North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge University Press.Publisher pageBook
  4. Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J. A. (2012). Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Crown.Publisher pageBook
  5. Manor, J. (1999). The Political Economy of Democratic Decentralization. Directions in Development. World Bank.Read it free
  6. Bardhan, P. and Mookherjee, D. (eds.) (2006). Decentralization and Local Governance in Developing Countries: A Comparative Perspective. MIT Press.Publisher pageBook
  7. Khan, M. H. (2018). Political settlements and the analysis of institutions. African Affairs, 117(469), 636-655.Publisher pageSubscription
  8. Whaites, A. (2008). States in Development: Understanding State-building. DFID Working Paper. UK Department for International Development.Read it free

Module 10. Module 10: Fiscal Federalism

  1. World Bank (2017). World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law. World Bank.Read it free
  2. Tiebout, C. M. (1956). A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures. Journal of Political Economy, 64(5), 416-424.Publisher pageSubscription
  3. Bird, R. M. (1993). Threading the Fiscal Labyrinth: Some Issues in Fiscal Decentralization. National Tax Journal, 46(2), 207-227.Publisher pageSubscription
  4. Rao, M. G. and Singh, N. (2005). The Political Economy of Federalism in India. Oxford University Press.Publisher pageBook
  5. Pasha, H. A. (2018). Growth and Inequality in Pakistan, Volume I. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Pakistan.Read it free

Module 11. Module 11: Public Goods, Clubs, and the Politics of Provision

  1. Samuelson, P. A. (1954). The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure. Review of Economics and Statistics, 36(4), 387-389.Publisher pageSubscription
  2. Buchanan, J. M. (1965). An Economic Theory of Clubs. Economica, 32(125), 1-14.Publisher pageSubscription
  3. Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Harvard University Press.Publisher pageBook
  4. Cornes, R. and Sandler, T. (1996). The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods, and Club Goods, 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press.Publisher pageBook
  5. Coelho, K. and Venkat, T. (2009). The Politics of Civil Society: Neighbourhood Associationism in Chennai. Economic and Political Weekly, 44(26-27), 358-367.Publisher pageSubscription

Module 12. Module 12: Information, Transparency, and Accountability

  1. World Bank (2004). World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People. Overview. World Bank.Read it free
  2. Jenkins, R. and Goetz, A. M. (1999). Accounts and Accountability: Theoretical Implications of the Right-to-Information Movement in India. Third World Quarterly, 20(3), 603-622.Publisher pageSubscription
  3. Roy, A. with the MKSS Collective (2018). The RTI Story: Power to the People. Roli Books.Publisher pageBook
  4. Aiyar, Y. and Mehta, S. K. (2015). Spectators or Participants? Effects of Social Audits in Andhra Pradesh. Economic and Political Weekly, 50(7).Publisher pageSubscription
  5. Pande, S. (2007). The Right to Information and Societal Accountability: The Case of the Delhi PDS Campaign. IDS Bulletin, 38(6), 47-55.Read it free
  6. Maiorano, D. (2014). The Politics of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Andhra Pradesh. World Development, 58, 95-105.Read it free
  7. World Bank (2004). World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People. World Bank.Read it free

Module 13. Module 13: Capstone: A Public Choice Diagnostic of a Real Programme

  1. World Bank (2017). World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law. World Bank.Read it free
  2. Andrews, M., Pritchett, L. and Woolcock, M. (2017). Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action. Oxford University Press (open access).Read it free
  3. Hirschman, A. O. (1967). Development Projects Observed. Brookings Institution (reissued 2015 as a Brookings Classic).Publisher pageBook
  4. Drèze, J. and Khera, R. (2017). Recent Social Security Initiatives in India. World Development, 98, 555-572.Publisher pageSubscription

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